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Carve   Listen
verb
Carve  v. t.  (past & past part. carved; pres. part. carving)  
1.
To cut. (Obs.) "Or they will carven the shepherd's throat."
2.
To cut, as wood, stone, or other material, in an artistic or decorative manner; to sculpture; to engrave. "Carved with figures strange and sweet."
3.
To make or shape by cutting, sculpturing, or engraving; to form; as, to carve a name on a tree. "An angel carved in stone." "We carved not a line, and we raised not a stone."
4.
To cut into small pieces or slices, as meat at table; to divide for distribution or apportionment; to apportion. "To carve a capon."
5.
To cut: to hew; to mark as if by cutting. "My good blade carved the casques of men." "A million wrinkles carved his skin."
6.
To take or make, as by cutting; to provide. "Who could easily have carved themselves their own food."
7.
To lay out; to contrive; to design; to plan. "Lie ten nights awake carving the fashion of a new doublet."
To carve out, to make or get by cutting, or as if by cutting; to cut out. "(Macbeth) with his brandished steel... carved out his passage." "Fortunes were carved out of the property of the crown."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Carve" Quotes from Famous Books



... themselves,—lawless outlets, if no others are available. The child's instinct to live will see to that. It sometimes happens that, when the channel of a river has been blocked by winter's ice, the river, on its awakening in Spring, will suddenly change its course and carve out a new channel for itself, reckless of the destruction that it may cause, so long as an outlet can by any means be found for its baffled current. It is the same with the river of the child's expanding life. The naughtiest and most mischievous ...
— What Is and What Might Be - A Study of Education in General and Elementary Education in Particular • Edmond Holmes

... rare, rare! An exquisite revenge: but peace, no words! Not for the fairest fleece of all the Flock: If it be knowne afore, 'tis all worth nothing! Ile carve it on the trees, and in the turfe, On every greene sworth, and in every path, Just to the Margin of the cruell Trent; There will I knock the story in the ground, In smooth great peble, and mosse fill it round, Till the whole Countrey read how ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg

... Church being so nearly finished; I remember, too, how a kind of misgiving mingled with the exultation, which, try all I could, I was unable to shake off; I thought then it was a rebuke for my pride, well, perhaps it was. The figure I had to carve was Abraham, sitting with a blossoming tree on each side of him, holding in his two hands the corners of his great robe, so that it made a mighty fold, wherein, with their hands crossed over their breasts, were the souls of ...
— The World of Romance - being Contributions to The Oxford and Cambridge Magazine, 1856 • William Morris

... I am a sculptor. I am making a fountain for the Municipality, and if I might carve your face ...
— The Eternal City • Hall Caine

... to sell the Country pure idealism. Now as a people we have the habit of wars in which we seek nothing, but after which, in spite of ourselves, a little territory, a few islands, or a region out of which we subsequently carve half a dozen States, is found adhering to us. Mr. Wilson offered us a war in which, of course, we sought nothing and found, at the end of it, not the customary few trifles of territory, but the whole embarrassing, beggarly ...
— The Mirrors of Washington • Anonymous

... when we die no one will raise a grand memorial over us; they will not carve our story upon marble tombs. And yet, I tell you, we shall have our monument, we have it now, and we are building it ourselves ...
— The Life of Duty, v. 2 - A year's plain sermons on the Gospels or Epistles • H. J. Wilmot-Buxton

... friends. How does it come that you are willing to throw away the precedence which you formerly enjoyed on account of your rank and station to become a plain citizen of another country where you have to carve out your place single handed? Don't you really ever ...
— The Camp Fire Girls Do Their Bit - Or, Over the Top with the Winnebagos • Hildegard G. Frey

... head, "why, can't we cut a tree down in the woods, saw it and carve it as we will, and make it last a hundred years? What become of the tree, sir;—why, as soon as the 'Jew' saw we was a-comin' so straight upon him, what does the old chap do but shift his helm, and make for the west shore. You never seed a steamer leave sich a wake, ...
— The Lake Gun • James Fenimore Cooper

... expressed above with respect to the Australian table. I tasted in Adelaide a favourable specimen of the wild turkey, and I believe it to be the noblest of game birds. Its flavour is exquisite and you may carve at its bounteous breast for quite a little army of diners. And the remembrance of one friendly feast puts me in mind of many. Is there anywhere else on the surface of our planet a hospitality so generous, so free and boundless, as that extended to the stranger in Australia? If there be ...
— Recollections • David Christie Murray

... no more. I'll merely add that I should like to carve that Madonna in German linden-wood and give her all the colours of life itself, and then die, for ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann

... North 1 mile to a rock Island on the Stard. Side. we had not landed long eer an Indian Canoe Came from below with 3 Indians in it, those Indians make verry nice Canoes of Pine. Thin with aporns & Carve on the head imitation of animals & other heads; The Indians above Sacrafise the property of the Deceased to wit horses Canoes, bowls Basquets of which they make great use to hold water boil their meet &c. &c. ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al

... to the south, most gorgeous river scenes were before us. This was by far the most beautiful spot I had come across on the river so far. I therefore named the huge island on which I stood George Rex Island. I gave Alcides orders to carve the name on a tree, but as he was an anarchist he refused to do it, excusing himself by saying that he ...
— Across Unknown South America • Arnold Henry Savage Landor

... I can't tell, not I's, how they'll cut and carve their visitings—all I know is, they be to be back here in ten days ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. IX - [Contents: Harrington; Thoughts on Bores; Ormond] • Maria Edgeworth

... work of trying to save at least some of the household from the flames. But the daughter neither heard nor cared for her. She had found what was left of her idol—her youngest child—once a ruddy, fearless boy, with curly flaxen hair, who had already begun to carve model longships and wooden swords, and to talk with a joyous smile and flashing eye of war! but now—the fair hair gone, and nothing left save a blackened skull and a small portion of his face, scarcely enough—yet to a mother far more than ...
— Erling the Bold • R.M. Ballantyne

... said, 'How be yer goin' ter do it, dad?' 'Why, cut her throat,' said Bill. 'You can't do it,' said George, 'the law sez yer must shoot her fust in the temple,' 'All right,' said old Bill, 'you shoot and I'll carve,' So next mornin' they led old Jinnie out with her head p'inted towards the barn. George had loaded up the old musket, and stood 'bout thirty feet off. George didn't know just edzactly where the cow's temple wuz, but he imagined it must be somewhere atween ...
— Quincy Adams Sawyer and Mason's Corner Folks - A Picture of New England Home Life • Charles Felton Pidgin

... It was laid on the kitchen table, upon which a tablecloth, sent by the thoughtful hosts at the hotel, was spread. There were napkins, a big turkey and claret and champagne, and a real, live, polite little Frenchman to carve and wait. Barclay and I sat on the bed. Mrs. Forbes had the only chair. Johnnie and his sister occupied the hamper. Before eating Mrs. Forbes said grace, in which she again quoted the passage from Scripture with which I began this narration. Oh! for a catchup meal ...
— Some Reminiscences of old Victoria • Edgar Fawcett

... interesting to Mr. Adams, by the influence it was exerting upon men's feelings concerning the still pending and dubious treaty with Spain. The South became anxious to lay hands upon the Floridas and upon as far-reaching an area as possible in the direction of Mexico, in order to carve it up into more slave States; the North, on the other hand, no longer cared very eagerly for an extension of the Union upon its southern side. Sectional interests were getting to (p. 123) be more considered ...
— John Quincy Adams - American Statesmen Series • John. T. Morse

... are three—two of Dr. Barnicot's, and one smashed in broad daylight on my own counter. Do I know that photograph? No, I don't. Yes, I do, though. Why, it's Beppo. He was a kind of Italian piece-work man, who made himself useful in the shop. He could carve a bit, and gild and frame, and do odd jobs. The fellow left me last week, and I've heard nothing of him since. No, I don't know where he came from nor where he went to. I had nothing against him while he was here. He was gone two days before ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes • Arthur Conan Doyle

... bishop's seat above all,—after the manner of the earliest Christian churches. The partition parapet before the high altar is of almost transparent marble, delicately and quaintly sculptured with peacocks and lions, as the Byzantines loved to carve them; and the capitals of the columns dividing the naves are of infinite richness. Part of the marble pulpit has a curious bass-relief, said to be representative of the worship of Mercury; and indeed the Torcellani owe much of the beauty of their Duomo to unrequited antiquity. (They came to be ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells

... Friday, may it not keep until Monday? We have a litter of sucking-pigs, excellently choice and white, six weeks old, come Friday. There be too many for the sow, and one of them needeth roasting. Think you not it would be a pity to leave the women to carve it?" ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore

... feeling which deepened with ripening years and lit up her later sorrows with a mild radiance; but her recent association with Madame Tallien and that giddy cohue had accentuated her habits of feline complaisance to all and sundry. Her facile fondnesses certainly welled forth far too widely to carve out a single channel of love and mingle with the deep torrent of Bonaparte's early passion. In time, therefore, his affections strayed into many other courses; and it would seen that even in the later part ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose

... touch thy antidote, my bay thy bath? Was ever building like my terraces? Was ever couch magnificent as mine? Lie on the warm rock-ledges, and there learn A little hut suffices like a town. I make your sculptured architecture vain, Vain beside mine. I drive my wedges home, And carve the coastwise mountain into caves. Lo! here is Rome and Nineveh and Thebes, Karnak and Pyramid and Giant's Stairs Half piled or prostrate; and my newest slab Older than all ...
— Poems - Household Edition • Ralph Waldo Emerson

... beautiful frock, it burn now. Soon your shoes, your stockings, your long petticoat, the corset shall burn, till there shall not be a shred they can say was yours. And then the body shall be burned—but first carve and chopped like meat ...
— Ambrotox and Limping Dick • Oliver Fleming

... displaced to make way for some incomprehensible French dishes, among which he could find nothing to eat.{1} I do not know what he would have said to its being placed altogether out of sight. Still there is something to be said on the other side. There is hardly one gentleman in twenty who knows how to carve; and as to ladies, though they did know once on a time, they do not now. What can be more pitiable than the right-hand man of the lady of the house, awkward enough in himself, with the dish twisted ...
— Gryll Grange • Thomas Love Peacock

... settlement in the northern portion of the Virginia plantation, and it was toward Virginia that the little band of passengers aboard the Mayflower thought they were heading. The story of how they happened to come to the stern and rockbound coast of New England and of how they happened to stay there and carve out of the wilderness a great commonwealth ...
— The Landing of the Pilgrims • Henry Fisk Carlton

... All the monks in the cloisters for twenty miles round shall sing requiems, and thou and I will walk bareheaded, with candles in our hands, by the bier, till we rest him in the Blessed Friedmund's chapel; and there Lucas Handlein shall carve his tomb, and thou shalt sit ...
— The Dove in the Eagle's Nest • Charlotte M. Yonge

... to patronise Roumania even in words, for her best friend is he who tells her to depend entirely on her own resources and develop those herself; to carve her fortunes, and to shape her ends. But when we look upon her sufferings, reflecting how for ages she has lain beneath the claws of savage enemies, quailed under despots who sucked the lifeblood of the nation, and then compare ...
— Roumania Past and Present • James Samuelson

... cannot color is no painter. It is not painting to grind earths with oil and lay them smoothly on a surface. He only is a painter who can melodize and harmonize hue—if he fail in this, he is no member of the brotherhood. Let him etch, or draw, or carve: better the unerring graver than the unfaithful pencil—better the true sling and stone than the brightness of the unproved armor. And let not even those who deal in the deeper magic, and feel ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin

... artists get, and it is very strange how they attained this merit while they were so inconceivably rude in other respects. It is remarkable that all the early faces of the Madonna are especially stupid, and all of the same type, a sort of face such as one might carve on a pumpkin, representing a heavy, sulky, phlegmatic woman, with a long and low arch of the nose. This same dull face continues to be assigned to the Madonna, even when the countenances of the surrounding saints and angels are characterized with power and ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... over some little distance, before he reached Edgar North. He found him sitting on the soft grass, underneath a large tree. He seemed to have been trying to carve his name; for a large E and half of an N were there. But he was tired of that; and a book he had brought with him seemed to have proved equally unsatisfying; for it was lying closed at his feet. He seemed very much surprised at seeing Arthur; but all he said, when ...
— Left at Home - or, The Heart's Resting Place • Mary L. Code

... Have chid me from the battle, swearing both They prosper best of all when I am thence. Would I were dead! if God's good will were so; For what is in this world but grief and woe? O God! methinks it were a happy life, To be no better than a homely swain; To sit upon a hill, as I do now, To carve out dials quaintly, point by point, Thereby to see the minutes how they run, How many make the hour full complete, How many hours brings about ...
— King Henry VI, Third Part • William Shakespeare [Rolfe edition]

... joy whenas she saw this. Then King Teghmus summoned architects and builders and men of art and bade them build a palace in that garden. So they straightway proceeded to do his bidding; and, when Janshah knew of his sire's command he caused the artificers to fetch a block of white marble and carve it and hollow it in the semblance of a chest; which being done he took the feather- vest of Princess Shamsah wherewith she had flown with him through the air: then, sealing the cover with melted lead, he ordered them to bury the box in the foundations and build over ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton

... minister was a marvellous reader of character, and in spite of Scotty's reserve, before the evening was gone he had allowed his guest to discover that he intended to carve out his own destiny as he ...
— The Silver Maple • Marian Keith

... studying us through a quizzing-glass, and playing cicerone to her followers, acquitted us of any gratitude. She had a tail behind her of heavy, obsequious old gentlemen, or dull, giggling misses, to whom she appeared to be an oracle. 'This one can really carve prettily: is he not a quiz with his big whiskers?' she would say. 'And this one,' indicating myself with her gold eye-glass, 'is, I assure you, quite an oddity.' The oddity, you may be certain, ground his teeth. She had a way of standing ...
— St Ives • Robert Louis Stevenson

... less favored countries of the North. But national unity was wanting. The country was made up of discordant states. Venice was ambitious of conquest; and the pontiffs in this period, to the grief of all true friends of religion, were absorbed in Italian politics, being eager to carve out principalities for their relatives. Italy was exposed to two perils. On the one hand, it was menaced by the Ottoman Turks; not to speak of the kings of France and Spain, who were rival aspirants for control in the Italian peninsula. On the other hand, voyages ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher

... books, a McGuffey reader, a Mitchell geography, a Ray's arithmetic, and a slate. The books had a delightful new smell also, and there was singular charm in the smooth surface of the unmarked slates. I was eager to carve my name in the frame. At last with our treasures under the seat (so near that we could feel them), with our slates and books in our laps we jolted home, dreaming of school and snow. To wade in the drifts with our fine high-topped ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland

... and describe in detail, and feature by feature, the beauty of the peerless Dulcinea, the burden being one worthy of other shoulders than mine, an enterprise wherein the pencils of Parrhasius, Timantes, and Apelles, and the graver of Lysippus ought to be employed, to paint it in pictures and carve it in marble and bronze, and Ciceronian and Demosthenian ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

... France. He pictured himself as her conqueror! One of his favorite books was Plutarch's "Lives of Illustrious Men." He devoured the "Iliad" and the "Odyssey" whole. "With my sword by my side, and Homer in my pocket, I hope to carve my way through the world," he wrote to his mother. Another well-thumbed volume ...
— Boys' Book of Famous Soldiers • J. Walker McSpadden

... but two of the art industries of the Village. There are many others—enough to fill a book all by themselves. There are the Villagers who hammer brass, and those who carve wood; who make exquisite lace, who make furniture of quaint and original design. There are the designers and decorators, whose brains are full of graceful images and whose fingers are quick and facile to carry them ...
— Greenwich Village • Anna Alice Chapin

... been a great revival of interest in wood paneling. We go abroad, and see the magnificent paneling of old English houses, and we come home and copy it. But we cannot get the workmen who will carve panels in the old patterns. We cannot wait a hundred years for the soft bloom that comes from the constant usage, and so our paneled rooms are apt to be too new and woody. But we have such a wonderful store of woods, here in America, ...
— The House in Good Taste • Elsie de Wolfe

... and understood, And departed swift from the feast-hall to do the work he would. To the chamber of death they gat them, to the pit they went adown, And saw the wise men sitting round the war-king of renown: Then they spake: "We are Atli's bondmen, and Atli's doom we bring: We shall carve the heart from thy body, and thou ...
— The Story of Sigurd the Volsung and the Fall of the Niblungs • William Morris

... quantity of tiles with long curly ears. The woodwork, throughout, is of a dark hue and there is much carving about it, with but a trifling variety of pattern for, time out of mind, the carvers of Vondervotteimittiss have never been able to carve more than two objects—a time-piece and a cabbage. But these they do exceedingly well, and intersperse them, with singular ingenuity, wherever they ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... work cut out for me,' said Howard grimly. 'I've got to work like hell, that's all. I've got to carve down expenses, fire men I can manage without, be on the job all the time to buy in stock cheap wherever it can be got and unload for a quick turnover and some ready cash. I've got to go in for more hay and wheat another season; the price is up and going higher. And real soon, the chances are, ...
— The Desert Valley • Jackson Gregory

... a not wholly discreditable prejudice against abridgments, especially of novels, and more especially against what are called condensations. But one may think that the simple knife, without any artful or artless aid of interpolated summaries, could carve out of La Princesse de Cleves, as it stands, a much shorter but fully intelligible presentation of its passionate, pitiful subject. A slight want of individual character may still be desiderated; it ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury

... age I ever knew," observed the old gentleman with a sigh, as he proceeded to carve the chickens, which were smoking on the hospitable table ...
— Jessie Carlton - The Story of a Girl who Fought with Little Impulse, the - Wizard, and Conquered Him • Francis Forrester

... "think before we speak", a distinct psychological process is required. We have to establish a new connection between the speech center and the center of volition. To hold the knife in the right hand and carve is easy; to hold it in the left is hard, for most of us, merely because the controlling impulse has always been sent to the muscles of the right arm. To learn to cut with the left is an extra effort, but can be done if necessary. It is ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman

... must carve its daring protest against the whole natural order of the universe upon the flaming ramparts of the world's uttermost boundary. The great religion must engrave its challenge to eternity upon the forehead of the ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys

... skilful in all the arts of beggars and vagabonds. I know how to open locks with a nail, and how to carve wood with ...
— The Red Lily, Complete • Anatole France

... shoulder as I laid hand on the wheel to check it, I saw a whitish smear that meant breakers; and the smear no sooner showed than above it a great black cliff stood out as if 'twere a moving thing and meant to carve into us right amidships—a great cliff with a rock on it like the Duke of Wellington's nose. A man from the top of it could have jumped onto our bulwarks, and I shut my eyes as it overhung, waiting for the crash; but ...
— Major Vigoureux • A. T. Quiller-Couch

... green as a pistachio-nut, There's plenty jasper somewhere in the world— And have I not Saint Praxed's ear to pray Horses for ye, and brown Greek manuscripts, And mistresses with great smooth marbly limbs? 75 —That's if ye carve my epitaph aright, Choice Latin, picked phrase, Tully's every word, No gaudy ware like Gandolf's second line— Tully, my masters? Ulpian serves his need! And then how I shall lie through centuries, 80 And hear the blessed mutter of ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning

... one name you would carve that way, and put an arrow through it," she said, meaningly. "At any rate, a silver arrow. Oh, maybe you think I haven't seen her wear it, and blush when I ...
— The Little Colonel's House Party • Annie Fellows Johnston

... branches droop so sorrowfully towards the ground that people plant them on their graves and some whose branches are so tough and flexible that people use them to weave baskets of. There are some out of which you can carve yourself a grand flute, if you know how. And then there are a heap about which there is nothing very remarkable ...
— The Old Willow Tree and Other Stories • Carl Ewald

... skies, Hermes, from whom all actions of mankind Their grace receive and polish, is my friend, So that in menial offices I fear 390 No rival, whether I be called to heap The hearth with fuel, or dry wood to cleave, To roast, to carve, or to distribute wine, As oft the poor are wont who serve the great. To whom, Eumaeus! at those words displeased, Thou didst reply. Gods! how could such a thought Possess thee, stranger? surely thy resolve Is altogether fixt to perish there, ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer

... He, though nearly seventy years of age, still lives in the hopes of recovering his sight. How faithful a companion of the unfortunate is hope! The Touaricks use mustard for bad fingers and hands. They also cut and carve their backs for blood-letting, and the marks remain for years upon years. I saw one of them whose back was scarred and ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson

... lonely, though beautiful, islands. This has been a work calling for solid rather than brilliant qualities—for a people morally and physically sound and wholesome, and gifted with "grit" and concentration. There is such a thing as collective ability. The men who will carve statues, paint pictures, and write books will come, no doubt, in good time. The business of the pioneer generations has been to turn a bloodstained or silent wilderness into a busy and interesting, a happy, if not ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves

... Angelo in the next generation used to carve statues, not like our timid sculptors, by modelling the work in clay, and then setting a mechanic to chisel it, but would seize the block, conceive the image, and at once, with mallet and steel, make the marble chips fly like mad about him, and the mass sprout into ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade

... in the use of the lance, the bow, and the sword. In the dangers and hardships of the chase the principal occupation in time of peace,—he was inured to fatigue, hunger, and pain; he learned to sound the horn at the different stages of the hunt, to dress the game when killed, and to carve it on the table.[9] He waited upon the ladies in their apartments as upon superior beings, whose service, even the most menial, was an honor. While yet a damoiseau, and before he had attained the rank of squire, the youth was expected to choose ...
— A History of English Prose Fiction • Bayard Tuckerman

... soon to die an ignominious death, had scarcely more authority than Manco-Capac, the son of Huascar, who was acknowledged by the inhabitants of Cuzco. Soon after this, some of the principal people in the country even tried to carve for themselves kingdoms out of the empire of Peru. Such was Ruminagui, the commandant of Quito, who caused the brother and the children of Atahualpa to be massacred, and declared himself independent. Discord reigned in the Peruvian camp, and the Spaniards resolved to ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part I. The Exploration of the World • Jules Verne

... Berry, which henceforth figures as the homestead in the pages of these volumes. But Maurice is soon obliged to adopt a profession. His mother's revenues have been considerably diminished by the political troubles. He feels in himself the power, the determination, to carve out a career for himself, and gallantly enters, as a simple soldier, the armies of the Republic,—Napoleon Bonaparte being First Consul. Although he soon saw service, his promotion seems to have been slow and difficult. He was full of military ardor, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 49, November, 1861 • Various

... to carve the nose, but no sooner had he made it than it began to grow. And it grew, and grew, and grew, until in a few minutes it had become an immense nose that seemed as ...
— Pinocchio - The Tale of a Puppet • C. Collodi

... your hand. With a tiny brush it can feather lines of ineffable suggestion, glints of hidden beauty. With a little tool it can carve strange dreams in ...
— Profiles from China • Eunice Tietjens

... weapons I might happen to have in my possession. I had a stout knife in my pocket; but five minutes' work with it on the door satisfied me that it would be a labour of days, instead of the few hours which remained to me, to carve my way out ...
— Under the Meteor Flag - Log of a Midshipman during the French Revolutionary War • Harry Collingwood

... at five o'clock on the bright afternoon of June 6th that the United States Marines began to carve their way into history in the battle of the Bois de Belleau. Major General Harbord, former Chief of Staff to General Pershing, was in command of the Marine brigade. Orders were received for a general advance on the brigade front. The main objectives were the ...
— "And they thought we wouldn't fight" • Floyd Gibbons

... water tax and a street tax. Every day when I sit down in my dining-room—my dining-room! I find the wish growing stronger that each poor soul in Baltimore, whether saint or sinner, could come and dine with me. How I would carve out the merry-thoughts for the old hags! How I would stuff the big wan-eyed rascals till their rags ripped again! There was a knight of old times who built the dining-hall of his castle across the highway, so ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb

... he did come home For to'sit downe and eat, He called for his daughter deare To come and carve his meat. ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby

... of the conversations of us boys when we assembled at our rendezvous after school. Suffice it to say that the teacher's ears must have burned. The consensus of opinion was that, if the teacher didn't want the desks carved, he should not have told us to carve them. We seemed to think that he had said, in substance, that he knew we were a gang of young rascallions, and that, if he didn't intimidate us, we'd surely be guilty of some form of vandalism. Then he proceeded to point out the way by suggesting penknives; and the trick was done. ...
— Reveries of a Schoolmaster • Francis B. Pearson

... court-house thereabout, Dick Hardy, then a good-humored, gay young bachelor, and the prime favorite of both sexes, was called upon to carve the pig at the court dinner. The district judge was at the table, the lawyers, justices, and everybody else that felt disposed to dine. At Dick's right elbow sat a militia colonel, who was tricked out in all the pomp ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume IV. (of X.) • Various

... clean through the neck of Hector. He fell in the dust and Achilles said, "Dogs and birds shall tear your flesh unburied." With his dying breath Hector prayed him to take gold from Priam, and give back his body to be burned in Troy. But Achilles said, "Hound! would that I could bring myself to carve and eat thy raw flesh, but dogs shall devour it, even if thy father offered me thy weight in gold." With his last words Hector prophesied and said, "Remember me in the day when Paris shall slay thee in the Scaean gate." Then his brave ...
— Tales of Troy: Ulysses the Sacker of Cities • Andrew Lang

... or indirectly in maintaining order and imparting blessing to the country. In this lies the value of a monarchy. But dignity is a thing not to be trifled with. Once it is trodden down it can never rise again. We carve wood or mould clay into the image of a person and call it a god (idol). Place it in a beautiful temple, and seat it in a glorious shrine and the people will worship it and find it miraculously potent. But suppose some insane person should ...
— The Fight For The Republic in China • Bertram Lenox Putnam Weale

... fair young dead, Pausing too drop on his grave a tear; Carve on the wooden slab at his head, "Somebody's darling ...
— McGuffey's Fourth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey

... 80 Vice and her sons to banish in disgrace, To make Corruption dread to show her face; To bid afflicted Virtue take new state, And be at last acquainted with the great; Of all religions to elect the best, Nor let her priests be made a standing jest; Rewards for worth with liberal hand to carve, To love the arts, nor let the artists starve; To make fair Plenty through the realm increase, Give fame in war, and happiness in peace; 90 To see my people virtuous, great, and free, And know that all those blessings flow from me; Oh! 'tis a joy too exquisite, ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill

... lived. One could lie to the world. Youth is optimistic, and Berenice, in spite of her splendid mind, was so young. She saw life as a game, a good chance, that could be played in many ways. Cowperwood's theory of things began to appeal to her. One must create one's own career, carve it out, or remain horribly dull or bored, dragged along at the chariot wheels of others. If society was so finicky, if men were so dull—well, there was one thing she could do. She must have life, life—and money would help some to ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser

... Clasagh-na-Vallagh. The patron soon tired of Connaught, and carried off his protege to London, where he placed him under Dr. Worgan, the famous blind organist of Westminster Abbey. At home, young MacOwen's duties were to keep his employer's accounts, to carve at table, and to sing Irish melodies to his guests. He was taken up by his distant kinsman, Goldsmith, who introduced him to the world behind the scenes, and encouraged him in his aspirations ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston

... killing a slave was indulging in what most cannibals indulge in—a satanist affectation. The lady was consciously shameless and the lord was consciously cruel. But it simply is not in the human reason to carve men like wood or examine women like ivory, just as it is not in the human reason to think that two and two ...
— Eugenics and Other Evils • G. K. Chesterton

... me with clothes and arms, much less to restore it as I wished to have done. I have already made two voyages to far-off lands, and come back no richer than I went, and have at length resolved to take service in the navy of France, in which I may hope to carve out my way to distinction, with the help ...
— Villegagnon - A Tale of the Huguenot Persecution • W.H.G. Kingston

... surround the base of the tomb are of even more exquisite workmanship: they represent weeping women, in long mantles and hoods, which latter hang forward over the small face of the figure, giving the artist a chance to carve the features within this hollow of drapery—an extraordinary play of skill. There is a high, white marble shrine of the Virgin, as extraordinary as all the rest (a series of compartments representing the various scenes of her life, with the Assumption ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James

... inscriptions on the tombstones, and thinking of this and that. Also, I was looking about for a nail from some corpse. I wanted a nail; it was a fancy of mine, a little whim. I had found a nice piece of birch-root that I wanted to carve to a pipe-bowl in the shape of a clenched fist; the thumb was to act as a lid, and I wanted a nail to set in, to make it specially lifelike. The ring finger was to have a ...
— Wanderers • Knut Hamsun

... one hallowing kiss on the dear, white cheek; then, with uplifted head, she said good-bye, and the mother smiled upon her in a pride that was deeper than her pain. The breed that had not feared, a generation back, to cross the seas and carve a province and a future from the forest, was not a breed to withhold its most beautiful and noble from the ventures of ...
— The Homesteaders - A Novel of the Canadian West • Robert J. C. Stead

... of her duty to carve and wait on her master specially. The dinner serviettes were wrapped up in a peculiar manner, and Mrs. Wright remembers that Lord Darnley's servants were always anxious to learn how the folding was done, but they never discovered the secret. ...
— A Week's Tramp in Dickens-Land • William R. Hughes

... would fain go to the city, to the house of Ulysses, for I would not be burdensome to thee. Perchance the suitors might give me a meal. Well could I serve them. No man can light a fire, or cleave wood, or carve flesh, or pour ...
— The Story Of The Odyssey • The Rev. Alfred J. Church

... short stories of the English language? Not a bad basis for a debate! This I am sure of: that there are far fewer supremely good short stories than there are supremely good long books. It takes more exquisite skill to carve the cameo than the statue. But the strangest thing is that the two excellences seem to be separate and even antagonistic. Skill in the one by no means ensures skill in the other. The great masters of our literature, Fielding, Scott, Dickens, Thackeray, Reade, have left no single ...
— Through the Magic Door • Arthur Conan Doyle

... Gilbert to carve in the tent there, for the children and governesses,' said Lucy, 'he and Genevieve were very busy there, but I found I was not of much use so, I came away with the Miss Bartons to look at the flowers, but now they are shooting, and I could not think ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge

... statue. He thinks, "Who will carve on the wall the person I dreamed of? No one was present when I dreamt. Has anyone carved the statue out of his fancy? A real person may exist in this world or how can an ...
— Tales from the Hindu Dramatists • R. N. Dutta

... wish to describe the picnic party on the top of the tower. You can imagine well enough what it is like to carve a chicken and a tongue with a knife that has only one blade and that snapped off short about half-way down. But it was done. Eating with your fingers is greasy and difficult—and paper dishes soon get to look very spotty and horrid. But one thing ...
— Five Children and It • E. Nesbit

... to carve the screen And raise the ivoried Rood; I parted with my small demesne To make my owings good. Heir-looms unpriced I sacrificed, ...
— Poems of the Past and the Present • Thomas Hardy

... pity; when he leaves Oxford he will read for the Bar. We have arranged all that; he will have a handsome allowance; and with his capacity—for his tutor tells me he is a clever fellow—he will soon carve his way to fortune;" and after this, Erle ...
— Wee Wifie • Rosa Nouchette Carey

... then leave it to rot in the wood; or he would plough a field, and sow it not. At one time he had a fancy to be a minstrel, but he had not patience to attain to skill; he would write a ballad and leave it undone; or he would begin to carve a figure of wood, and toss it aside; sometimes he would train a dog or a horse; but he would so rage if the beast, being puzzled for all its goodwill, made mistakes, that it grew frightened of him—for nothing can be well learnt ...
— Paul the Minstrel and Other Stories - Reprinted from The Hill of Trouble and The Isles of Sunset • Arthur Christopher Benson

... In the capacity of doing all things well lies the willingness to serve one duty. The Jack of all trades is sure to be good at none, for who is good at all is Jack of one only. It seemed a bitter thing to me, formerly, that painters must only paint and sculptors carve; but I see now the wisdom. In one thing well done lies the secret of ...
— Early Letters of George Wm. Curtis • G. W. Curtis, ed. George Willis Cooke

... child could dream of? King and cardinal and noble vied in making tower and gable, gallery and court as of a fairy palace; banqueting hall and secret chamber where they and their playmates could revel to their heart's content and leave their initials carved as thickly as boys carve them on an old school desk. And how richly they filled them! A host of new arts sprang up to minister to the needs of these palace-dwellers: our museums are still filled with the glass and enamel, the vases and porcelain, ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith

... all in your histories; how the General had leave to take so many followers, and carve out for themselves land and estates ...
— Mass' George - A Boy's Adventures in the Old Savannah • George Manville Fenn

... therefore, carve we with the chisel Thought The pure block of the Beautiful, and gain From out the marble cold where it was not, ...
— Poems of Paul Verlaine • Paul Verlaine

... attempt is made to carve the whole body," etc. "The offence which it is attempted ...
— Slips of Speech • John H. Bechtel

... proper way. At any rate, they have something to do that seems as if they were doing something. It has been said that the New England stories are cramped and narrow. Even a far-off view of the iron-bound life whence they are drawn justifies the author. You can carve a nut in a thousand different ways by reason of the hardness of ...
— Letters of Travel (1892-1913) • Rudyard Kipling

... Sequani, bringing his people with him. The few thousand families which were first introduced had been followed by fresh detachments; they had attacked and beaten the aedui, out of whose territories they intended to carve a settlement for themselves. They had taken hostages from them, and had broken down their authority, and the faction of the Sequani was now everywhere in the ascendant. The aedui, three years before Caesar came, ...
— Caesar: A Sketch • James Anthony Froude

... fingers were dismembered as readily as twigs, and blood was poured out like water. Many of the warriors would cut two gashes nearly the entire length of their arm; then, separating the skin from the flesh at one end, would grasp it in their other hand, and rip it asunder to the shoulder. Others would carve various devices upon their breasts and shoulders, and raise the skin in the same manner to make the scars show to advantage after the wound was healed. Some of their mutilations were ghastly, and my heart sickened to look at them, ...
— A Further Contribution to the Study of the Mortuary Customs of the North American Indians • H.C. Yarrow

... convey it to people of the West. This word, which has been written into English as "Shu," means: My heart responds to yours, or my heart's desire is to meet your heart's desire, or I wish to do to you even as I would be done by. This sign, symbol or word Confucius used to carve in the bark of trees by the roadside. The French were filled with a like impulse when they cut the words Liberty, Fraternity, Equality, over the entrances to all ...
— Little Journeys To The Homes Of Great Teachers • Elbert Hubbard

... building a wall, nor for contriving windows so as to exclude light, air, and earth. As much as any of you, I am for every man's sitting under his own vine, and for his training, pruning, and eating its fruit how he pleases. Let the artist paint, write, or carve, what and how he wills, teach the world through sense or through thought,—I will not dissent; I have no patent to entitle me to do so; nay, I will be thoroughly satisfied with whatsoever he does, so long as it is pure, unsensual, ...
— The Germ - Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art • Various

... nor unto them whom I shall hear so to be, but unto them only after strict trial and due examination or lawful information. Furthermore, do I promise and swear that I will not write, print, stamp, stain, hew, cut, carve, indent, paint, or engrave it on anything moveable or immoveable, under the whole canopy of heaven, whereby, or whereon the least letter, figure, character, mark, stain, shadow, or resemblance of the same may become legible or intelligible to myself or any other person in the known world, ...
— The Mysteries of Free Masonry - Containing All the Degrees of the Order Conferred in a Master's Lodge • William Morgan

... used to muse upon her; and by that custom I can never come into it, but the same tender sentiments revive in my mind, as if I had actually walked with that beautiful creature under these shades. I have been fool enough to carve her name on the bark of several of these trees; so unhappy is the condition of men in love, to attempt the removing of their passions by the methods which serve only to imprint it deeper. She has certainly the finest hand of any woman ...
— The De Coverley Papers - From 'The Spectator' • Joseph Addison and Others

... wonderful "old Man of the Mountains." Yet, those very people had infinite possibilities with their own faces while in their youth. Only by having a vision of some day attaining that far mountain height of purity and victory, as written on those features, could they carve out a countenance ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand

... got, why offer much more? If a man knows that ... but I am teaching you! All I mean is, that, in Benedick's phrase, 'the world must go on.' He who honestly wants his wife to sit at the head of his table and carve ... that is be his help-meat (not 'help mete for him')—he shall assuredly find a girl of his degree who wants the table to sit at; and some dear friend to mortify, who would be glad of such a piece of fortune; and if that man offers ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett

... continual stream of words had done more to elucidate the mysteries in which his employer had begun to be befogged than half a year of the apothecary's slow and scrupulous guessing. It was like showing how to carve a strange fowl. The way he dovetailed story into story and drew forward in panoramic procession Lufki-Humma and Epaminondas Fusilier, Zephyr Grandissime and the lady of the lettre de cachet, Demosthenes De Grapion and the fille a l'hopital, Georges De Grapion and ...
— The Grandissimes • George Washington Cable

... having the principal dishes carved on a side-table, and served by attendants, is now very generally adopted at ceremonious dinners in this country, but few gentlemen who go into company at all can safely count upon never being called upon to carve, and the art is well worth acquiring. Ignorance of it sometimes places one in an awkward position. You will find directions on this subject in almost any cook-book; you will learn more, however, by watching an accomplished carver than ...
— How To Behave: A Pocket Manual Of Republican Etiquette, And Guide To Correct Personal Habits • Samuel R Wells

... was an avocation, constantly indulged in, but outside the main business of his life; with Edmund Spenser public life and affairs were subservient to an overmastering poetic impulse. He did his best to carve out a career for himself like other young men of his time, followed the fortunes of the Earl of Leicester, sought desperately and unavailingly the favour of the Queen, and ultimately accepted a place in her service ...
— English Literature: Modern - Home University Library Of Modern Knowledge • G. H. Mair

... long-liv'd phoenix, in her blood; Make glad and sorry seasons as thou fleets, And do whate'er thou wilt, swift-footed Time, To the wide world and all her fading sweets; But I forbid thee one most heinous crime: O! carve not with thy hours my love's fair brow, Nor draw no lines there with thine antique pen; Him in thy course untainted do allow For beauty's pattern to succeeding men. Yet, do thy worst old Time: despite thy wrong, My love shall in my verse ever ...
— Shakespeare's Sonnets • William Shakespeare

... lad!" he continued, returning the empty gourd to Uncas; "now we will see how these rampaging Hurons lived, when outlying in ambushments. Look at this! The varlets know the better pieces of the deer; and one would think they might carve and roast a saddle, equal to the best cook in the land! But everything is raw, for the Iroquois are thorough savages. Uncas, take my steel and kindle a fire; a mouthful of a tender broil will give natur' a helping hand, ...
— The Last of the Mohicans • James Fenimore Cooper

... desperate faces, yellow and brown and white, consulted one another with rolling eyeballs and strange tongues clamorous. Sofia heard the broken rustling of heavy respirations; she saw uncouth gesticulations carve the shadows; her nostrils were revolted by effluvia of unclean bodies, garments saturate with opium smoke and curious cookery, ...
— Red Masquerade • Louis Joseph Vance

... Seventy to Seventeen Hundred Seventy-three—take your choice. His father was an Icelander who had worked his passage down to Copenhagen and had found his stint as a wood-carver in a shipyard where it was his duty to carve out wonderful figureheads, after designs made by others. Gottschalk Thorwaldsen never thought to improve on a model, or change it in any way, or to model a figurehead himself. The cold of the North had chilled ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists • Elbert Hubbard

... but I suppose he told the boys they was fine physical specimens and etc. Well Al that stuff is O.K. but if I wasn't a fine physical specimen I might be somewheres where I could go to sleep without some stabber waiting to carve their ...
— Treat 'em Rough - Letters from Jack the Kaiser Killer • Ring W. Lardner

... were his meat and his drink, by day and by night. He became a man of sorrows and an expert in grief. He took upon him the woes of the world till he was bowed and bent, as with the weight of years. The tears of sympathy grooved his cheeks, as when streams carve their way down mountain sides. Because of this men looked at him and saw neither form nor comeliness; neither was there any beauty in him that they should ...
— Christ, Christianity and the Bible • I. M. Haldeman

... meal and flour. My white folks would come down to the branch and watch me run the little toy mill. I used to make toy rifles and pistols and all sorts of nice playthings out of that soapstone. I wish I had a piece of that good old soapstone from around Franklin, so I could carve some toys like I used to play with ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Georgia Narratives, Part 4 • Works Projects Administration

... Land that he might measure exactly the distance from Pilate's house to Calvary. When he was satisfied with his measurements he returned to Nuremberg and commissioned the great sculptor, Adam Kraft, to carve "stations," as he called them, between his home and St. John's Cemetery to the northwest of the city. These "stations," which are merely stone pillars on which are carved in relief scenes from the sufferings of our Lord just before his death, are still standing, ...
— Great Artists, Vol 1. - Raphael, Rubens, Murillo, and Durer • Jennie Ellis Keysor

... leaning against a pillar. There are figures of huntsmen in full chase, and of fishermen sitting patiently and quietly "waiting for a bite." A very celebrated curiosity is the large urn or vase of blue glass, with figures carved on it in half relief, in white. (For the ancients knew how to carve glass.) These white figures look as if made of the finest ivory instead of being carved in glass. They represent masks enveloped in festoons of vine tendrils, loaded with clusters of grapes, mingled with other foliage, on which birds are swinging, children plucking grapes or treading ...
— Round-about Rambles in Lands of Fact and Fancy • Frank Richard Stockton



Words linked to "Carve" :   mold, work, hew out, scratch, carver, sculpture, shave, carve out, engrave, carve up, form, forge, chip at, fillet, grave, etch, inscribe, hew, cut up, filet



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